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U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 50 Years

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Re: U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 50 Years

#161

Post by inglor_cz »

pietrovismara wrote: post #159
inglor_cz wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever visited a gypsy village in eastern Slovakia or in the Balkans? You know, the huts that barely stand? Or some of the most notorious housing projects? That is a trip straight to the Middle Ages. Look at the following videos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ7WHKU_UoY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Men6iwpLjno Eastern Europe has some really bad places. IDK if USA is worse, but it would have to try.

Those are gypsy and you can find the same exact type of camps/villages in Western Europe, no need to go to Eastern Europe. Their condition doesn't really depend on the poverty level of the country they live in, but other factors such as cultural and integration issues, not always caused by them. In short, not a really good example of poverty.

I am a Czech, I know gypsies well, I had several classmates from all sorts of gypsy families - from very well integrated to the ghetto standard.

I would argue that multigenerational poverty in contemporary West has always something to do with cultural and integration issues. Plenty of refugees who came with a small bags of personal items have built middle class lives in a generation, even though they were foreign, did not know the language and faced crude racism from primitives.

Re: U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 50 Years

#162

Post by Aunche »

pietrovismara wrote: post #71
lumost wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These two seem at odds, are we defining poverty in such a way that it's decoupled from the expected living standard of the age?

Exactly. Some people seem to refer to poverty as living with the standards of 2000 years ago. Of course we improved. That doesn't mean that relative poverty is getting worse and that other factors like free time have worsened if compared with centuries ago.

>other factors like free time have worsened if compared with centuries ago.

This might be true if you consider being holed up with your family for the entirety of winter as "free time." Also, these studies always neglect the amount of random work that needed to be done before technology (e.g. fetching water from a well, chopping firewood, weaving baskets, etc).

Re: U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 50 Years

#163

Post by dr_dshiv »

lordloki wrote: post #148
hintymad wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty obvious that there has been an enlarging wealth gap and poverty rate has increased. What I don't understand is that the current narrative is to attribute such unfortunate events to systemic racism. Shouldn't we at least look at class difference, shift of industry trend, impact of policies, i.e., take the holistic view?

You'll notice that the rise in media reporting on systematic racism correlates strongly with the rise in discussions about class difference, industry trends, globalization, etc. The latter was Bernie Sander's platform before he was "challenged" by BLM during the 2016 primary. Not to imply that Sanders didn't previously support BLM, but he rhetoric changed after that. It was clear to me that Sanders thought the primar…

My mind is blown. But I'm an anticonspiracy theorist. What can explain why race differences move us so much more than class?

Re: U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 50 Years

#164

Post by ihm »

cactuspatch wrote: post #158
syops wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I contend that the real tragedy of American politics is that what ought to be class/labor issues gets sidetracked into race issues. If poor whites would stop thinking in terms of race and instead think in terms of class and economic justice then real progress could be made. Lyndon Johnson had a famous quote about just this. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lbj-convince-the-lowest-wh...

Huh? This is completely backwards. Poor whites DO focus on economic issues. That's why Trump was able to promise bringing back manufacturing & coal jobs to win over a large segment of voters. The problem is that all of the Democrat/liberal/left-wing (whichever label you prefer when discussing the core American political divide) completely denies the existence of poor whites and explicitly rejects helping them. For th…

I think syops criticism applies to the combined dynamic of the 2 American political parties and mainstream narratives, rather than either one specifically.

Re: U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 50 Years

#165

Post by cammikebrown »

slumdev wrote: post #95
lumost wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These two seem at odds, are we defining poverty in such a way that it's decoupled from the expected living standard of the age?

They're not at odds. It is possible for the people at the bottom to have better housing, better food, better education, and better health, while the people at the top still enjoy a vastly disproportionately greater increase in income and wealth. With disproportionate gains and different spending priorities, you won't see consistent inflation across all kinds of goods. Because the inflation is concentrated at the top,…

I think it depends where you live.

My parents bought a home in 1988 for $100k and sold it six years later for $120k. Zillow says it’s worth $590k now. They bought their next home in 1994 for $180k, and it’s now appraised at $650k. This is Sacramento, CA.

By the way, they pay about $3k/year in property taxes, while a new homeowner pays about triple that. If property taxes weren’t kept so artificially low for long time homeowners, I don’t think property prices would have gone up so much.

Re: U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 50 Years

#166

Post by dragonwriter »

d1zzy wrote: post #137
dragonwriter wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know why we always go back to income inequality Because it's pretty well established that outside of the most abject poverty, relative deprivation is a more significant factor driving experienced disutility than absolute material condition, contrary to the naive assumptions many people make that increasing individual absolute material condition increases individual utility independent of external context. T…

That reads as an argument but my lack of English skills makes it hard to understand what exactly are you saying. However, it does seem to me that that you still haven't addressed one of the main points you're responding to, that we can have perfect equality where everyone lives as the average person below poverty line today. Would that be a better society considering your arguments?

> we can have perfect equality where everyone lives as the average person below poverty line today

Well, no, we probably can't. Inequality can be mitigated, but it can’t be eliminated, especially durably.

> Would that be a better society considering your arguments?

That's really an objectively unanswerable question for many reasons. You can't really measure, on more than an ordinal scale, individual utility, or aggregate it, except by interposing non-objective judgements. Would it be better for lots of people currently above the poverty line? Maybe, depends how far below the poverty line the equal society was.

Re: U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 50 Years

#168

Post by anotherman554 »

ultrarunner wrote: post #122
anotherman554 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government CPI statistics show 18.7% price increase between 2010 and 2020. It's certainly possible that your expenses went up 50% in your presumably super-affluent area of the U.S. It wouldn't surprise me if booming tech companies in certain regions have caused this- but it is not the effect of monetary policy or government minimum wage policy- and my expenses have not gone up much in the last 10 years in my weal…

Do government CPI statistics account for "the grocery shrink ray" wherein prices remain fixed but quantities decrease?

"The CPI market basket is developed from detailed expenditure information provided by families and individuals on what they actually bought."

https://www.bls.gov/cpi/questions-and-answers.htm#Question_3

So if families are buying in lower quantities then yes it would be accounted for.

Re: U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 50 Years

#169

Post by gilbetron »

slashdev wrote: post #77
lumost wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These two seem at odds, are we defining poverty in such a way that it's decoupled from the expected living standard of the age?

Inequality is not a bad thing. It's actually necessary to have inequality of outcomes otherwise you have no incentives for improvement. An example of a society with very low inequality is old-school communism where most people are equally poor - it's clearly not a good thing. What is bad is extreme inequality where a lot of people are in poverty. I think most people would agree that poverty is a bad thing that we sho…

I've been thinking about this a lot this past decade or so, and it is an interesting question. One thought I've had is that a perception (real or not) of inequality is baked into our species as being bad, particularly when it gets extreme. Why might that be? Well, if my neighbor generally has more resources than me, it's usually not that big of a deal. You maybe have more or better food, or some nicer things, but if my needs are met and I have things I can enjoy, I don't get worried.

Now, if you suddenly have a lot more than me, say you have enough to provide for other people in a meaningful way, I start to get concerned. Why? Because you don't just have more than me, you start having power over me. And if I don't stop inequality increasing, that could quickly get to the point that I can't do anything about it. Your power can become absolute, for all practical purposes.

I think humanity has learned culturally, if not genetically, that really bad situations arise if someone has way more than you. Power corrupts and all that, and gross inequality becomes power.

Of course, these days, it might not be "real", meaningful inequality (Jeff Bezos has a lot of wealth, but it is wealth tied up in Amazon, mostly, and the US Government has far, far more wealth), but the perception is there, and the perception is enough to trigger concern.

Re: U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 50 Years

#170

Post by sct202 »

cactuspatch wrote: post #158
syops wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I contend that the real tragedy of American politics is that what ought to be class/labor issues gets sidetracked into race issues. If poor whites would stop thinking in terms of race and instead think in terms of class and economic justice then real progress could be made. Lyndon Johnson had a famous quote about just this. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lbj-convince-the-lowest-wh...

Huh? This is completely backwards. Poor whites DO focus on economic issues. That's why Trump was able to promise bringing back manufacturing & coal jobs to win over a large segment of voters. The problem is that all of the Democrat/liberal/left-wing (whichever label you prefer when discussing the core American political divide) completely denies the existence of poor whites and explicitly rejects helping them. For th…

I'm from Ohio, and OSU considers students from the Appalachian region of Ohio as underrepresented students and has specific scholarships for them as well as makes them eligible for many more general diversity/inclusion scholarships. Also first generation college students (of any race) qualify for some diversity programs as well. I know other colleges in Ohio, like Ohio University, had similar programs.
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